Two Years Remaining

What happened this last month?

As we hit our two years left in the countdown, a lot has happened this month. Our expenses dropped considerably due to the fact that our last 2 vehicle purchases have finally fallen off our 12 months of rolling expenses. We don’t purchase vehicles often, it just happened that these two occurred relatively close to one another. I decided to mark the 25x our annual spending as “completed” since that was our goal. I’ll hopefully be marking several others complete soon.

This month we planned a trip to Connecticut for a convention. More on that to come in the future. We also had spent a week this month in Lakeside Chautauqua. It’s always a relaxing time just being able to sit on the front porch and hear people playing shuffleboard or on the playground.

One of our goals is to travel more. We’ve been doing a pretty good job of that so far, but we want to go to even more places for longer periods of time. That’s why I recently signed up for the Chase Sapphire Reserve (referral link) to dip our toes in the water of travel rewards. I know there is a cost to the card, but on the flip side, it comes with plenty of bonuses that forces us to travel in order to take advantage of them all. So far we’ve went to concert, used the Apple TV and Music credits, and used credits towards hotel stays, to name a few. We can always cancel if we don’t see the benefit. We did the same thing with the Costco Executive Membership, and somehow, we always manage to get benefit out of it even though we weren’t sure we’d spend enough.

Where did we spend the most?

Our monthly expenses were down compared to last last month. Annually, they’re down considerably from last July.

• $3551 Future Connecticut trip
  • Lodging and tickets
• $1220 Property taxes
• $996 Week at Lakeside
• $990 Chase Sapphire Reserve fee

The Money Related Numbers

96.37% to target number (previously 96.96%)

This is our invested assets (401k, HSA, IRA, brokerage, etc.) divided by our target goal number.

24 months until original FI date (previously 25)

The number of months until my 45th birthday and our Financial Independence date.

3.03 months until calculated FI date (previously 2.54)

The number of expected months until we reach our target number. This is based on our current expected monthly contributions, assuming a 10% annual return.

The Expense Related Numbers

24.30 times annual spending (previously 19.51)

This is how many multiples of our annual spending we have saved up towards our goal. For example, if this value was 9.1 and we spent $10,000 annually, we would have $91,000 saved up.

97.21% to minimum FIRE (previously 78.05%)

The minimum number to achieve FIRE is 25 times our annual spending. This number shows how close we are to the absolute minimum.

Completed! – 25.22 times annual spending at goal number (previously 20.12)

We’d like to save 25 times our annual spending. This is how many times our annual spending we’ll have saved when we reach our goal number. If it’s 25 or greater, than our goal number will be enough to cover our expenses. If it’s lower than 25, we’ll need to either cut our expenses or increase our goal number.

How Much We Invested

-40.50% Month to Month Change In How Much Saved (previously -66.65%)

This number shows the change in what we saved in our investment accounts this month compared to the prior month.

-22.97% Month to Month Change in How Much Saved With Employer Contributions (previously -65.96%)

Same as the prior number, but with employer contributions counted.

0.85% Month to Month Change in 12 Month Savings Average (previously 2.33%)

This number shows the change in our 12 month rolling average. This helps to smooth out months over time.

1.93% of 12 Month Average Net Income Invested With Employer Contributions (previously 2.06%)

Same as the prior number, but with employer contributions counted.

How we track the numbers

I’ve been using Empower (referral link) to track our numbers. I put them into a spreadsheet that calculates the numbers you see above.